Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Adventures in Pizza-Making

Thanks to our dear friend Cat, and a well placed jar of honey, we have one of the most beautiful pizza pictures I have ever seen!

We made four different kinds of pizza, most of which followed the rules :-). The one above contained a carmalized onion "sauce," blue cheese and arugula. I love salad pizza and make it quite frequently at home. There's something about the warm, slightly wilted greens atop a sizzling, cheese bread that I just can't get enough of.

This pizza was based off of one of Erica's favorites from Boston - it contained a (japanese?) eggplant, thinly sliced, ricotta cheese and garlic. Some thoughts on this: the original version was with breaded eggplant. Thinly sliced eggplant worked well because it was much quicker, but this version was much less decadence. Also, be sure to salt this - if you have a non-salted ricotta cheese, it doesn't really bring out the flavors to the fullest.

Mmm.. An up close of a classic. Basil. Tomatoes, Mozzarella Cheese. Garlic. Olive Oil. This one got devoured quickly. As you can tell, we have an aversion for sauces. Erica doesn't like pesto. I'm not a huge fan of tomato. We think garlic and olive oil does the trick....

Last, a word on our dough experience. I make pizza quite often (probably twice a month or so), and for the last 2 years, have almost exclusively made the dough from scratch. Usually, I'll make it after getting home from school, and then let it rise for the proper hour or so. Sometimes, I'll get lazy and not even let it rise at all, usually to no detrimental effect. Given that I wanted to try something new, we let this dough rise for THREE WHOLE DAYS in the refridgerator. I'd heard rumors that leads to more flavorful dough.

Instead, we had dough that required being rolled out with a rolling pin. It was flat, and didn't stretch very well at all (as Erica said, it didn't pass the "window pane" test). It didn't really taste any better or any worse than usual. I suspect, perhaps, that it was the fact that I used regular yeast, instead of rapid rise, which I usually do. I also wonder if the type of flour had something to do with it. I'm sticking with my short cuts...

Looking forward to November! Erica and I already have a weekend date set in mind down at my parents house in Big Sur. I'm hoping it's something warm, fragrent and autumnal....